Shakahola: The challenge that remains of exhuming more bodies
Bodies exhumed at Shakahola Forest being loaded into a police van in this picture taken on May 16, 2023.
What you need to know:
- "The just concluded rains have complicated the process but with GPRS and previous markings, we shall continue with the exercise.
- On the first day we managed to exhume seven bodies of which four were found in one grave while in the first grave, we found two bodies," Government chief pathologist Johansen Odour.
The rubble of semi-permanent homes is what remains of the places where hundreds of suspected followers of controversial preacher Paul Mackenzie called home in the Shakahola forest.
When Nation journalists eventually got exclusive official access into the forest on Monday after months of a break from the exhumation of bodies by state agencies, sources had intimated that things would be different in the fifth phase of exhumation.
On day one of the latest exhumation phase, seven bodies were retrieved from shallow graves.
The journey into the forest this time round was not as painstaking as it was in the previous sessions whereby paths were bushy and it was easy for one to get lost in the vast land.
The routes leading to areas believed to be shallow graves of people who fasted to death in the belief that they would go to heaven were cleared by security personnel.
Along the way, there are mounds of mud, which are the remains of the many semi-permanent houses which had been built by the followers of the doomsday sect.
Some of the homesteads’ vegetable gardens have been replaced by weeds and bushes.
Although Nation.africa did not get approvals to visit the place which allegedly used to be Mackenzie's home in Shakahola, sources within the police investigations team confided that some of the dams he constructed were filled up with water during El Nino rains.
Officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation began digging up 50 graves identified within the vast Shakahola forest where the seven bodies were exhumed from three graves on the first day.
The recovery of the seven bodies, which brings the total number of bodies found in Shakahola to 436, continues to raise questions about the scale of the deaths in the area.
Government chief pathologist Johansen Odour and the Head of the homicide department at the DCI Martin Nyuguto led the operation.
Although the paths leading into the forest were cleared, a challenge awaits the security teams involved in exhumation because of increasingly thick vegetation.
Mr Odour said through technology they will be able to continue with the exercise which targets 50 earmarked graves.
“The just concluded rains have complicated the process but with GPRS and previous markings, we shall continue with the exercise. The first day we managed to exhume seven bodies of which four were found in one grave while in the first grave, we found two bodies,” said Mr Odour.
Mr Odour said the exhumation of the identified graves which are scattered in the forest and identification of bodies will go on concurrently since the government has learnt from the previous exercise.
“We are asking more people who suspect their kin might have disappeared from Shakahola to come out for DNA matching since the government has acquired adequate reagents to speed up the identification exercise,” said the chief pathologist.
The government had suspended the exhumation of bodies about a year ago to allow DNA matching of the 429 bodies which were exhumed since the discovery of the mass graves.
Mr Odour said already 32 bodies of those exhumed have been released to their relatives for burial after identification.
“Families failing to come out to assist in identification of the bodies remains a big challenge that is why we are calling Kenyans to cooperate in this phase to complete identification of the bodies,” he said.
Mackenzie and his fellow suspects are being held in custody after their request to be released on bond was turned down by the court since they do not have any known places of residence apart from Shakahola which is a protected crime scene.
The suspects were charged early this year after 277 days behind bars, over the deaths of 429 people whose bodies were exhumed from the expansive Shakahola forests.
The investigations into the killings had taken the state nine months.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was satisfied that, upon analysis of the evidence shared by the Director of Criminal Investigation, there was sufficient evidence to prosecute all 95 suspects being held in connection with the Shakahola deaths.
The DPP has filed 11 charges against the suspects, including murder, manslaughter, assault causing bodily harm, radicalisation, terrorism, child cruelty, and torture.
Timeline of Shakahola Massacre.
